Overview

The Ridge Racer Planetary Sounds EGC DECI-MIX Extra Disc is a bonus CD that is available if the album was purchased at the Ridge Racer Night event or through the SuperSweep store. Mixed by Takahiro Eguchi of SuperSweep, it features mostly music from the Ridge Racer Planetary Sounds album, although it does feature some music from earlier games in the series as well. How does this compare to some of his other mixes in the past?

Body

Of his recent mixes for Ridge Racer 3D and Tekken Tag Tournament 2, this is definitely the longest of the bunch, featuring over 50 minutes of music. It is also the one that is going to probably be the most difficult to digest, especially if you aren't the biggest fan of some of the more dissonant tracks of the series.

The mix starts off with Taku Inoue's contributions to the series, "Racer's Delight" and "Nitro Right Now," both of which, to me, are a treat, especially the latter. It transitions into Nobuyoshi Sano's "Virtuoso", which definitely brings a very large shift in terms of tone, but I think it serves as a nice way to bring the energy down a bit from the first portion of the mix. However, the intensity is brought right back with Hiroshi Okubo's "Into the Lead" before moving into a homage to the series' origins.

From there, it moves into Ryo Watanabe's "Sliding Beat" and Yu Miyake's "Future Driven", keeping up the intensity. However, I can't help but feel that the latter track would have been better more towards the beginning of the mix, as it fits more with the style of Taku Inoue's tracks. From there, the mix moves into Akitaka Tohyama's "Purple Sky" and I really like the transition here, as it layers the intro of "Purple Sky" with the end of "Future Driven". Once the latter fades away, the more melodic fragments of Tohyama's psytrance offering are the first thing you hear once it's the only track playing.

From there, "Radiance" by Nobuyoshi Sano is the next on the docket, which serves as a nice track to separate Tohyama's track and Kyoko Miyakura's "Super Acceleration." The mix ends with Rio Hamamoto's "Digital Horizon" and Shinji Hosoe's "The Time is Now." I think these tracks transition well into one another, given their distorted synthesizer and rock focus with ample vocal samples as well.

Summary

In the end, for fans of the tracks mentioned above, I think this mix can be quite enjoyable. However, for those who only enjoy a handful of the tracks mentioned, this mix might be one you could pass on. I think that, for the most part, Eguchi manages to effectively transition between the tracks with only some minor missteps along the way in terms of flow.

Available as a bonus item for the purchase of the Ridge Racer - Planetary Sounds via Sweep Record Shop.